How to Set Boundaries in an Immigrant Family

It’s not unusual for boundaries to enter the conversation during a therapy session. Although the term is often misused, boundaries, when applied correctly, are one of the most important skills we can learn. Studies show that they contribute to more stable relationships,  maintain mental health, and improve quality of life. As a therapist, I advocate for boundaries all the time, whether it be in friendships, romantic relationships, at work, or with family.

However, there are very valid moments when a client feels the concept is completely untenable. The sheer mention of establishing a boundary with a family member is enough to prompt an eye roll and a scoff. A boundary, amongst many immigrant families, feels completely ridiculous. Cultural differences that, amongst other things, affect parent-child relationships, often seep the thought of setting boundaries in guilt.

These same clients nevertheless come to therapy with a deep unease or resentment around their relationships with their families, usually their parents. They may feel a sense of duty to them, but also a feeling that they have no autonomy over their own lives. Some feel their parents are over-involved in personal matters, don’t respect their privacy, or insist on making decisions for them, well past the age when they can make those decisions themselves.

So where do we go from here?

In this article, I will break down the following: 

• Why it’s so hard to set boundaries with immigrant families
• The effects of intergenerational trauma
• How to set boundaries with an immigrant family

By the end of the article, you’ll have a better understanding of the dynamics that keep you stuck in the guilt-resentment cycle, some of the effects of intergenerational trauma as they relate to setting boundaries, and how to set boundaries in a way that’s actually feasible.

Why It’s So Hard to Set Boundaries with Immigrant Families

“If I ever told my dad that he needs to respect my boundaries, he would laugh in my face.”

“There is no way I can tell my mom she can’t be this involved in my relationship, she would have a breakdown.”

“If I told my parents not to comment on how I raise my children, they would tell me I’ve become too Canadian.”

For many children of immigrants, the idea of saying “no” to a parent can carry far more weight than the word itself suggests. It can feel like disrespect, rejection, forgetting everything a parent sacrificed to build a better life for their family, or altogether ridiculous.

Immigrant families carry a deeper sense of interconnectedness and interdependence than some Western counterparts. Family obligations, respect for elders, financial responsibility, and loyalty can be important expressions of love and care. Many parents have also navigated enormous sacrifices, uncertainty, racism, language barriers, and the challenges of starting over in a new country, and require more help from their children than ones who grew up in Canada.

For some immigrant parents, their children are not just their children. They may also be their closest connection to the country they built a life in. Many of my clients had to grow up taking on a variety of roles: 

• The translator
• The advocate
• The source of practical support
• The emotional confidant
• The connection to a new generation
• The sense of security as they get older

This is called parentification, and it doesn’t mean parents are intentionally placing an unfair burden on their children. In many cases, these roles developed gradually and out of necessity. However, it can create a relationship where separation feels threatening.

At the same time, growing up in Canada can expose children to a very different understanding of independence, privacy, individuality, and emotional autonomy. You may have learned that it is healthy to say no, communicate your needs, or make decisions independently, while your family may interpret those same behaviours as selfish, distant, or disrespectful. Neither experience exists in a vacuum.

When a child becomes more independent, a parent may experience that independence as a loss of closeness or even a loss of family. The result is that both people can become stuck; the more the parent reaches for closeness, the more the child feels the need for distance. The more the child creates distance, the more the parent may reach. Alternatively, the child may give in to the parent’s need for closeness, choosing connection over authenticity.

The “Guilt-Resentment” Loop

This dynamic can establish a sort of internal “tug-of-war” that many of my immigrant and first-generation clients experience. Many describe feeling stuck in a loop of guilt and resentment. You feel guilty when you say no to a parent, and you feel resentful when you say yes.

Statements like “After everything we’ve done for you…”, “You don’t need us anymore,” or “So you think you’re better than us now” can make an otherwise ordinary act of independence feel like a moral failure and keep us stuck in the loop.

Although this loop is a result of an attempt at maintaining a relationship with your parents, it can actually erode your connection with them. Although it may seem difficult or impossible to step out of, it is usually an unsustainable dynamic where you may feel forced to choose either connection or authenticity, but can never have both.

This is why establishing boundaries in a culturally appropriate way is so important.

The Effects of Intergenerational Trauma

There is also another piece of this dynamic that is important to understand: intergenerational trauma. Many immigrant parents did not come to Canada with the luxury of learning how to have healthy boundaries, communicate emotions, or prioritize their own psychological wellbeing. Some grew up in environments where survival, family obligation, and maintaining stability took precedence over individual needs. Some experienced poverty, war, political instability, displacement, racism, abuse, or other forms of adversity, while others grew up in families where emotional expression was simply not encouraged or modelled. 

For many, the message was never “What do you need?” but rather “What needs to get done?” You work, you provide, you take care of your family, and you do what you have to do.

These experiences can shape the way a parent understands love, responsibility, conflict, and what it means to care for others. Sometimes, what was once an adaptive response to a difficult environment gets carried into a completely different one. A parent who had to be hypervigilant may become overly involved in their child’s life. One who had very little control over their own circumstances may become controlling with their children. A parent who was taught to suppress their emotions may have difficulty tolerating their child’s anger, sadness, or disagreement. One who experienced abandonment or instability may have a particularly difficult time with their child becoming independent. The intention may be love, but the impact can still be difficult to bear.

For the child, this can create another layer of guilt. You may know that your parents have been through things you have never experienced and have a great deal of empathy for that. You might find yourself thinking, “I know why my mom acts this way. She had a really difficult childhood,” or “My dad sacrificed everything for us. How can I complain about him being involved?” You may even think, “They didn’t have the resources or support that I have now. Maybe I should just understand.”

Breaking Generational Patterns

Understanding history matters, but it doesn’t require you to repeat it. In fact, one of the ways we can interrupt intergenerational patterns is by becoming aware of them. You can recognize that your parents’ survival strategies helped them get through a particular period of their lives, while also recognizing that those same strategies may no longer be appropriate for your life now. You don’t have to carry forward every behaviour that was passed down to you simply because it helped someone you love survive. 

Breaking an intergenerational pattern is not the same thing as rejecting your family. Sometimes, it is an attempt to build the kind of relationship with your family that previous generations did not have the opportunity to build: a relationship where love does not require control, where closeness does not require access to every part of your life, where helping each other does not mean losing yourself, and where being a good child does not require you to remain a child forever.

How to Set Boundaries With an Immigrant Family

The language of boundaries is not often written for those of immigrant families. Simply stating, “this is my boundary,” may be met with ridicule, anger, tears, accusations, or guilt-tactics. Escalating to conflict or even “cutting family members off” may not be possible or even desired.

So, let’s put away the “traditional” methods of setting boundaries for ones that are culturally-competent and take into consideration the specific history and background of the recipient. 

1. Take Stock of The Changes You Want

Before setting a boundary, it’s important to get clear on what’s actually bothering you. This sounds obvious, but a ton of people come to therapy with a general feeling of being overwhelmed by their family without being able to figure out exactly what they need to be different. 

Maybe your mother calls every day and expects you to answer immediately. Perhaps your father comments on your finances, your career, or your relationship. Maybe your parents expect to be consulted before you make major decisions. Or they show up unannounced, criticize your parenting, or share personal information about you with extended family.

The goal is not to create distance for the sake of creating distance. It is to identify the specific behaviour that is creating resentment and determine what would make the relationship feel more manageable. Sometimes the boundary is actually quite small. You may still want your mother involved in your life, but not in every decision you make. Perhaps you still want to see your parents every week, but not every weekend. You may still want their advice, but you want to be able to decide whether you take it. Make it tangible.

2. Communicate What You Want, Not Just What You Don’t Want

When clients are frustrated with their families, it’s easy to focus solely on what they want their parents to stop doing. 

“I don’t want my mom asking about my relationship anymore.”

“I‘m done with my dad commenting on my career.”

“I don’t want my parents telling me how to raise my children.”

Those are valid concerns, but I often find it more helpful to ask a different question: What kind of relationship do you actually want with them?

Perhaps you want your mother to be someone you can call when you need support without feeling like she is going to take over. Maybe you want your father to be involved in your life without feeling like you need his approval for every decision. Or, you want your parents to have a relationship with your children that is loving and involved, but still respects that you are the parent.

This can change the way you approach the conversation. Instead of communicating a boundary as a rejection of the relationship, you can frame it as an attempt to make the relationship more sustainable.

Shifting from: “I don’t want you involved in my relationship.” 

To: “I really value being able to come to you when I need advice, and I also need some space to work through things with my partner on my own. I will always come to you when I want your perspective. If it keeps coming up when I’m not asking for advice though, I’ll feel overwhelmed.“

The boundary is still there, but the second version communicates that the goal is not to push the parent away.

3. You Don’t Have to Use the Word “Boundary”

This is one of the biggest adjustments I make when working with clients from immigrant families. Sometimes the word boundary itself becomes the problem.

If telling your father, “I need you to respect my boundary,” is guaranteed to create an argument, there is no therapeutic reason to insist that you use those exact words. The goal is not to prove that you know the correct terminology, it’s just to communicate what you need.

You might say, “Dad, I appreciate that you’re trying to help, but I’m going to try this on my own first.”

Perhaps you’ll tell your mother, “I know you care about us, but I don’t want to talk about my relationship right now.”

You might tell your parents, “I know you have a lot of experience with raising children, but I want to try doing things this way with my kids.”

These statements may sound less assertive than the language often used in traditional discussions about boundaries, but they can still communicate a limit. In some families, maintaining warmth and respect in the delivery can make it more likely that the message will actually be heard.

4. Choose Your Battles

Not every uncomfortable comment needs to become a boundary conversation. This is especially important when working with families where conflict can have significant consequences.

You may decide that your mother’s comment about your career is annoying but not worth confronting, while her expectation that she gets to make decisions about your marriage is something you need to address. You may decide that your father giving unsolicited advice is something you can tolerate, but being yelled at during disagreements is not.

This is not about suppressing yourself or allowing your family to walk all over you, but about being intentional about where you put your energy. You do not need to correct every comment, defend every decision, or convince your parents that your way is better. Sometimes, you can simply hear the opinion and continue living your life.

5. The Boundary Is What You Do

The most important part of setting a boundary is remembering that you cannot control what another person does. You can’t make your mother stop asking personal questions or your father stop giving advice. What you can control is what you do when those things happen.

If your mother continues asking about your relationship after you have told her you do not want to discuss it, you can change the topic. If your father continues criticizing your parenting, you can tell him that you are going to stop responding if it continues.

This is a toughie, I know. It’s also the differentiation between helplessness and autonomy. For many children of immigrants, this is the first time they are learning how to separate love from obligation, respect from obedience, and closeness from access. That is a significant shift, and it can take time.

The goal is not to become completely independent from your family or to stop caring what they think, it’s to develop enough autonomy that you can choose how you participate in your family relationships rather than feeling that you have no choice at all.

6. Expect Resistance

Remember: your family’s reaction is not necessarily an indication that you communicated incorrectly.

If your family is used to having total access to your life, your boundary may feel like a change to the entire relationship. There may be guilt, anger, tears, accusations, or attempts to negotiate the boundary. Your parents may tell you that you have changed, that you are selfish, that you don’t care about the family anymore, or that you have become too Canadian.

I am absolutely not diminishing how incredibly difficult this can be to tolerate, particularly when you are already carrying guilt about setting the boundary in the first place, but discomfort does not necessarily mean something has gone wrong. 

It may help to emphasize your intentions– “I am not trying to push you away,” “I love you and I care about our relationship,” “I really want you in my life”. Remember, however, that your job is not to change their minds about how they feel, it’s not even to get them to understand you; it is just to hold the boundary you set.

Creating Change in an Immigrant Family

Your family may never change. They may never understand why you require the boundary, or be able to see beyond their needs and what they’re accustomed to. Boundaries are about what you do, not how they respond.

You cannot control whether your mother asks intrusive questions, but you can decide how much information you give her. You cannot control whether your father criticizes your choices, but you can decide whether you continue the conversation.

This can feel incredibly uncomfortable; we may have spent much of our lives learning to accommodate our families, anticipate their needs, avoid disappointing them, and maintain harmony. Learning that we are allowed to make choices our parents disagree with can feel like guilt before it feels like freedom.

Remember that you can love your parents and still have limits with them. You can be grateful for what they sacrificed and still decide that some of those patterns do not need to be repeated. You can respect your culture without allowing familial expectations to dictate every aspect of your adult life.

This is why culturally competent therapy matters. You need a therapist who can understand your need for autonomy without dismissing the importance of family, obligation, and interdependence. Someone who can hold both truths: that your parents may have very real reasons for relating to you the way they do, and that their reasons do not mean you have to continue participating in dynamics that are no longer working for you.

If you’re interested in working together, you can book a free call or send me an email. I work with folks online throughout Ontario and in person in Toronto. 

Want to learn more? Read What is Parentification? Signs, Impacts, and Healing or Healing from Emotionally Immature Parenting.